


The Girl They Pulled From the Trainwreck

by WearyOctopus



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - All Media Types, Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: Book/Movie: The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, Book: The Last Battle (Narnia), Gen, Post-Book: The Last Battle (Narnia), The Problem of Susan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-08
Updated: 2019-02-21
Packaged: 2019-10-24 16:20:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 17
Words: 18,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17707589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WearyOctopus/pseuds/WearyOctopus
Summary: Lucy is alive. The trainwreck at Finchley Station has claimed dozens of victims but Lucy Pevensie still clings to life, albeit from a coma.Susan finds herself alone at St. Ann's hospital, fretting over her brothers, fruitlessly phoning her parents, willing her sister to wake up.





	1. September 3, 1949 - London, England

_Further up. Further in._

The sun was up. Its light peeked through the crack in the dark blinds and inched along the white bedsheets, illuminating by tiny increments the teenage girl sprawled on the hospital bed. Her eyes were closed, her brown hair tousled and specked with debris, her limbs bound in casts. Her pale, gashed cheeks had been wiped clean of blood and bandaged at some point during the ambulance ride. Her lips were charred, her eyelashes singed, and yet somehow, even in her insensibility, a serene smile had spread across her face. An otherworldly smile. And, ever so faintly, through this smile, one might almost become convinced she had mouthed the words,

_Further up. Further in._

She seemed to form this phrase over and over, several times, before her smile faded and she receded back into the depths of unconsciousness.

Another young woman was there, perhaps four years her elder. She had slouched into a beige padded chair near the bedridden girl’s head at some unplaceable point of the eternal night. She wore a black rain jacket and a light brown skirt. Her glossy red lipstick was smudged on her upper lip and tearstains had dried onto her cheeks.

During the night, the frequent comings and goings of nurses and doctors had echoed about the rooms as more victims were brought in for treatment. The train crash had claimed dozens of victims.

The line of sunlight continued its journey across the bed and along the wall, until it met the eyeline of the seated woman. She awoke all at once and noticed the new dressings on her sister’s limbs. Pushing herself up on the arms of the chair, she groped for the light switch. She turned and gazed at the girl for several long moments before reaching out to push the bangs from the patient’s eyes. She checked for pulse and steady breathing. Satisfied in the girl’s stability, she stood beside her, face blank and arms limp, gazing into a void.

Awakening a second time, she ducked into the hallway. She noticed an idle public telephone and called her parent’s number again, unanswered, her third fruitless attempt to contact them since she’d arrived. As she held the receiver to her ear and counted the rings, she surveyed the scene.

An exhausted nurse was explaining the trouble with a patient down the hall to her replacement, pointing at things on a clipboard. Another rushed past, steering an empty bed covered with gore down the hall.

The nurse behind the desk was on the phone, leaning over on her elbow, her forehead planted on her left hand, grey hair slipping over her knuckles. Her voice wavered as she spoke and she clenched her teeth as she listened. “Yes ma’am, I’m very sorry but we have no record of a Richard Wellington being admitted here...No...no, no records at all of a...ma’am?...Mrs. Wellington? ...can...can I refer you to...” She turned to the receiver, removing it from her ear quickly and gazing at it. She hung up.

Susan stepped forward to address the woman behind the desk, wringing her hands a little as she approached. “Pardon me, ma’am. Hello. My sister is in 258. I’m almost certain she was with my two brothers on the train last night. I just want to know if they’ve been found yet? I hadn’t heard anything about them last night.”

The nurse, a wrinkled, pudgy woman wearing off-white scrubs, sighed and nodded. “Their names?”

“Pevensie. Peter and Edmund Pevensie.”

“P-E-V...?”

“P-E-V-E-N-S-I-E.”

She ran a finger down through the list, slowing through the P’s. “...no....no, they aren’t here, as far as I can tell. Only Pevensie we know about is your sister. I’ll call around though. You've given us their descriptions already?”

"Yes, last night."

She shuffled through the papers, humming to herself. "Hmm, I don't have those handy. I'll ask the other girl where she put them. Don't you worry, love, we'll sort it all out."

“Thank you very much.”

“Oh, and hon...” the nurse passed her a tissue and pointed at her own upper lip. “You’re a bit smudged there.” Susan accepted the tissue and thanked her as she wiped her lip and wobbled back to the room.

Occupied beds lined the hallways and waiting rooms. She gazed around at the handful of disfigured, wounded, and prone figures surrounding her, then back to the scurrying uniforms, grasping at equipment and instruments, passing charts, rushing off to other floors and wings. She noticed a small puddle of blood on the floor near her feet. She shuddered and felt a stab of nausea.

Pushing through the door into her sister’s room, she wiped her eyes and stroked the girl’s dark matted hair. A purple headband somehow still graced her pale brow. Her chest rose and fell, rose and fell. She lay on the bed parallel to her sister, and reached her right arm around above the pillow. “We’ll find them, Lu. They’ll be alright.”

She watched her little sister carefully for any signs of movement. Nothing rewarded her vigilance but the slow steady breaths and quiet little heartbeats.

Whirling from the bed, Susan paced the length of the room, phrasing her words with tight, short hand gestures. “So, Lu. Mum and Dad are bound to show up any minute. Then, we’ll find Peter and we’ll find Ed. You’ll get better, and so will they, and then we’ll all finally be able to get on with things. You know. Properly.”

Susan turned back and stared at the blank, pale face on the bed. Creeping to her sister’s side once more, she cocked her head to one side to watch her. She brushed away a fleck of dried blood that had been hidden beneath a lock of hair. She bobbed her head.

“We’ll find them,” she said, her voice breaking.

She cleared her throat. “Of course we will. Just you watch, Lu. Mum will come bursting through that door there and throw her arms around us and tell us that Edmund and Peter are right behind her or safe at some other hospital or that they’re both alright except for maybe a few cuts or burns or something, and they’ll be right as rain, good as new in no time flat.”

The noisy bustle outside stopped her as, for several moments, a new patient was rushed past the door. Susan gazed at the door until long after they were gone. She turned back to her sister.

“They’ll be here when you wake up, Lu. I’m sure of it.”

She returned to Lucy’s side and lay down beside her again. Resting her head next to Lucy’s, Susan avoided the sight of her sister’s mangled arms and legs. The abrasions and punctures on her face were harder to avoid. She began to stroke the girl’s hair again. She teared up again, her breath wavering.

“Lucy? Please wake up.”


	2. June 8, 1003 - Beaversdam, Narnia

Susan skirted a small thicket, leading her chestnut mare. The simple horse picked her way through the close foliage at the end of the reins. The two queens had never considered it appropriate to ride a talking horse on anything but a special occasion. And, even then, only with many assurances from the horse as to the honour it would be to carry royalty.

Lucy had also dismounted and was following at a short distance. She was examining a lovely batch of flower buds under a low lying bush. Several bulbs had bloomed at the foot of the small thorny thicket and tulips were now reaching out from underneath in magnificent azures and golds.

Reaching a clearing, Susan looked back at her sister. She had found a nest in the centre of a bush and was kneeling next to it, straining to identify the species.

“Lucy, leave them alone.”

“But they’re away and there are some feathers in there. They’re short and brown and look a little fuzzy,” she said, kneeling in the dirt and peering between the branches.

“It’s probably just a sparrow.”

“Just a sparrow? Listen to yourself. And it can’t be a sparrow, the feathers aren’t the right shape.”

Susan smirked. “Whatever they are, they won’t be happy to have their nest inspected by a Queen of Narnia without any notice. You know how fussy birds can be.”

Lucy frowned and sat back on her feet.

“Come on, we’re almost there. Once we get to the top of that rise over there, we should be able to see it.”

Lucy came abreast of Susan and her horse, manoeuvring in the direction indicated. They picked through another small stand of spruces and began to climb the hill.

Lucy opened her mouth, left it open for a beat, and then spoke. “Susan? What do you suppose is happening back in our world right now? I mean, the first couple times I came to Narnia, it seemed like no time had passed in our world at all. But we’ve been here for so long, almost three years now. Who knows how much time has passed in our world? What happens if we lose the war and the wardrobe gets moved? Or destroyed? Would we be trapped here?”

“You aren’t saying you want to go back? Because I find that very hard to believe.”

“No, no. I don’t want to go back. Well...not enough to actually do it. But still, I wonder. And I wonder if and when we do ever go back, if... well, if Mummy will be looking for us. If we’re gone long enough, the Professor might notice we aren’t there and call her. And she’ll think we’re missing or dead and after... after Daddy...went missing... and...”

Lucy began to cry. Susan leaned over and embraced her. They rocked back and forth on their heels as they hugged, Susan crinkling her forehead and surveying the woods over Lucy’s head.

“I... Susan, I feel bad. She’ll think she’s all alone in a horrid world full of wars and death and animals that don’t talk and unpleasantness, with no family and nowhere to go and no answers. I... no, it’s too horrid.”

Susan stepped back and held Lucy out at arm’s length, tipping her head to one side and smiling.

“Aw Lu, I miss Mummy too. I’m sure the boys do as well. But, just think back to the first time you stepped into Narnia. What was happening?”

They reacquired their direction and began strolling towards the Beavers’ as Lucy wiped her eyes and reviewed.

“Well, the first time, we were all exploring the house. You and Peter and Edmund peeked into the spare room and moved on and I went inside to look in the wardrobe. I went in and saw the lamppost and the snowy wood and met Mr. Tumnus and had tea and slept for a couple hours or so and he helped me escape and I came back through the wardrobe.”

“Right. I remember it well. I saw you go into the room as Peter and Edmund and I were walking away. I told the boys to wait there for a second because you were having a look inside so we waited about thirty seconds. You weren’t in there even for a whole minute. How long did it take you to get into Narnia once you were in the room?”

“Oh, um, maybe thirty seconds, certainly not much more than that.”

“There you go. So as soon as you entered Narnia, time essentially stopped. It may have literally stopped. And if it literally stopped, then no matter how long we stay here, it may be the exact same time there when we go back. Mrs. Macready might still be showing that group of Londoners around the place. If time moves there at all while we’re away, it won’t move more than a minute or two for the years and years we might be here.”

“That will be awfully peculiar then, when we four have all aged years and years in no time at all. Imagine the fright we’ll give poor Mrs. Macready if we’ve all grown six inches taller in a single afternoon.”

They walked on, arm in arm, in silence for several minutes. The sunshine mottled down on them through the branches, undulating gently in the breeze. The oaks, birches, maples, and pines whispered to one another behind and before them, hushed and respectful of their royal guests. To their right, a raucous little creek burbled down toward the river. The sun was loitering near its zenith, loath to descend from the clear blue sky. The shade smelled cool and earthy, and the warmth of the sun felt like a kind embrace.

“Susan?”

“Mmm?”

“Where are we? Like, really?”

“What do you mean?”

“Are we still in the wardrobe? Is all of Narnia in the wardrobe? Or is it more of a door into Narnia and not a box that holds it?”

Susan slowed to a stop, tilting her head back as she thought. “Well, I don’t know. That’s a good question. You should ask Aslan next time you see him. If anybody knows the answer, it would be him.”

Lucy’s face shone as she nodded. “Oh yes, I will. I’ve already started a list of the things I’m going to ask him the next time I see him. But I want to know what you think.”

“What I think. Well.... I suppose, logically, the wardrobe would make more sense as a door than as a container. We opened the door to the wardrobe and we walked right through it. We found ourselves here. I remember seeing the tree-branches and the snow and the cones and feeling the wind while we were still inside the wardrobe, clutching the coats, crouching on the floorboards. And we looked back inside and could see out into the spare room from Narnia. But I suppose you could do that if it were a container as well. Perhaps...oh I don’t know. A door. I think it’s more like a door.”

“Yes, I think I agree with you.”

The creek still chattered along to their right, and a patch of skunk cabbage assaulted their noses, pushing them slightly off course, down onto a crunchy carpet of pinecones and needles.

After a dozen or so steps downhill, Lucy spoke up again.

“I wonder how many other doors into Narnia there are?”

Susan shrugged. “Who knows? Perhaps it’s always changing?”

“Perhaps. Oh Susan, look, there’s Mr. Tumnus. And he has a lady friend.”

Tumnus was descending the hill from the west, arm in arm with a gorgeous oak dryad, taller than him by nearly half a foot. They had appeared from behind a thicket of blackberries and were about to intersect Susan and Lucy’s path, forty paces along. As Lucy cried out, they turned and burst out gaily, calling out their greetings.

“Your Majesties, how wonderful to see you.”

Lucy tossed the reins to Susan and broke off at a sprint. She tackled Tumnus, who nearly fell on his ass. Everyone had a hearty laugh as Lucy made a great show of squeezing the breath out of him.

As Tumnus extricated himself from Queen Lucy, Susan caught up and offered her hand to the dryad who bowed and kissed it eagerly. “Lovely to meet you, miss. What’s your name and how do you know our dear Tumnus?”

“Your Majesty, I am Dryope, daughter of Phoebe, of the Oaks of Shuddering Woods. I met Tumnus at the wonderful ball that you and His Majesty High King Peter hosted at Cair Paravel last month.”

“Ah yes of course, very good. I’m glad you enjoyed the event. It was a devil of a thing to plan. I was sure it was going to be a disaster. Lucy. LUCY. Come now, let go of the poor faun. It hasn’t been that long. Lucy, this is Dryope, of the Oaks of Shuddering Woods. You remember Phoebe? From the coronation?”

Lucy clasped her hands in front of her face and gasped. “Are you Phoebe’s daughter?”

Dryope bowed and smiled graciously. “Yes, I have that honour, Your Majesty.”

Tumnus smirked and sauntered over. “Trust Queen Lucy to make the connection.”

They began to drift over the last hundred metres to the Beavers’ door. It burst open before they arrived and Mr. Beaver bounded out, fully recovered from his arrow wound at Beruna.

“Welcome, everyone. Your Majesties, welcome. Tumnus, Dryope, lovely to see you again, welcome. Everyone please come in, come in, make yourselves comfortable. Mrs. Beaver’s got the kettle on and I’ve hauled up sommat a bit stronger as well. Your Majesty, Queen Susan, can I take care of those horses for you?”

They all ducked and crowded into the little antechamber, wiping shoes, kissing hands, kissing cheeks, bowing, laughing, and chattering thoughtlessly. They moved into the living room where Mrs. Beaver greeted them with warm embraces and piles of fresh baked goods.

The whole evening proceeded without a hitch. More friends arrived until creatures were sprawled out on the carpets. The compliments of the guests were even more generous than the helpings of food. Mr. Beaver and Tumnus fetched several more bottles of wine and spirits. Dryope turned out to be an enchanting songstress, sending them all into hushed reveries at the turn of her golden majestic melodies.

They all marched out to watch the sun set in the west over the trees of Lantern Waste and then returned later to see the stars come out.

At one point, they were all laying in the sweet damp grass of a nearby clearing, pointing out constellations to Susan and Lucy who still had difficulty picking them out, when Susan realized that she had never been so happy in all her life, that this was one of those precious moments of pure ecstasy that she would remember for the rest of her life. She sat up, wrapped her arms around her knees, and regarded the creatures sprawled around her, drawing pictures in the sky, telling tall tales of adventures and feasts and kings and queens of old. She beamed at them and returned to the ground, wine drunk, intoxicated by the lights of the cosmos.


	3. September 3, 1949 - London, England

Later that afternoon, a young man sporting a crew cut, a gold watch, and a well-fitted navy blue blazer entered the hospital waiting area where Susan had been sent while they operated on Lucy. The young man approached from behind her and shook her shoulder. Her eyes flew open and she grabbed his hand.

“Peter? Oh. Hell, Dick, I thought you were Peter,” turning around in her seat and releasing his hand.

“Nope. Just your boyfriend.”

“What are you doing here?”

He floated around to stand in front of her chair and hovered there, showing no interest in taking either of the free seats beside her. “I’m here to get a lobotomy, Susan. What do you think I’m doing here?”

She gritted her teeth and glared at the newspaper she’d been leafing through. “I meant how did you know where to find me?”

“I heard it through the grapevine which train had crashed at which station,” he recited, still holding his ground hovering in front of Susan, “and I remembered what you’d said at breakfast about their return from the country. I specifically remember thinking how queer it was you were being so specific about it.”

Susan plopped the newspaper back on the table, rubbed her eyes, and ran her fingers through her hair. She nodded at him. “All right. That answers my question. Well done. You listened to me. For once. Now are you going to sit? Or are you going to keep hovering over me like a sarcastic rain cloud?”

Dick rounded the chairs again and massaged his hands onto her shoulders. “Someone’s cranky. Are you hungry? Have you eaten anything today?”

“Oh god no, I can’t eat, its...”

“Come on, Sue, you got to eat.”

“You bloody wanker. You don’t even realize that you haven’t asked me how my family is yet, do you? They could all be dead for all you know.”

He poked his head over her left shoulder. “Oh come on, they’re not dead. You’re not at the morgue, you’re here.”

“Pete and Ed are still missing. My cousin, Eustace, is still missing and some of our friends have turned up dead. And, of course, Lucy is here in critical condition. And to top it off, I can’t get my parents on the bloody telephone. You fucking arsehole.”

Rushing around the chairs to sit next to Susan, he groaned sympathetically. “Oh shit shit shit. I am so sorry.” He cast a desperate glance about the waiting area. “Look. I’m really sorry. I should have asked. That’s terrible, truly terrible. You can yell at me some more if you’d like. But, I mean, you can’t starve yourself, Sue. Come on. We’re getting you some food and we can stay here with Lucy this evening and wait for news of the others. But after regular visiting hours are over, I’m taking you home for a good rest in your own bed.”

“Oh, um, no, I don’t think so.”

“Come on. Or would you rather spend the night sitting upright in a godawful hospital chair?” He jumped up and rounded the chairs yet again, tensing his fingers on her shoulders. “Come on, you can’t stay here. Lucy will be fine, right? She’s, you know, stable?”

“Seems like it.”

“See? Let’s get some food, we’ll come back for an hour or two, and then we’ll be right back here in the morning.”

“No, Dick, I... my aunt and uncle will be here any minute, and I promised...”

“I thought you hated your aunt and uncle.”

Susan sighed, her whole body sinking into the chair.

Dick squeezed her shoulder and tipped his head to one side. “Come on, Sue. We can leave a message with the front desk. You can see them another time.”

“Fine, you’re right. I need to be fresh for later. Let’s eat.”

Dick stuck out his arm for Susan to take and they strolled down the steps and out into the street without a word.

He studied her face before speaking. “How is Lucy? You said she’s stable, but what are her injuries?”

Susan set her teeth and listed the ailments off her fingers. “Stable may be an overstatement. I guess it’s all relative. She has two broken legs, a shattered wrist, several bruised ribs, a dislocated shoulder, a broken jaw, abrasions and cuts all over, and a severe concussion. And that’s just what they know so far. They suspect some organ damage and maybe some internal bleeding. So she’s in a coma and the doctors are keeping up as best they can.”

“Jesus Christ, that poor girl.”

Susan nodded and bit her lip.

“Sue, I’m really sorry for being a prick just now. This is a shitty situation and I was being a tool. You’re a hero for even standing up. I’m sure you’ll get some good news about your family any minute. And, anything you need, anything at all, let me help you.”

She studied the sidewalk and nodded, half smiling.

They settled on a pub a couple blocks from the hospital. As they walked inside, Susan saw a broad shouldered young man with a mop of blonde hair seated at the bar with his back to her. He wasn’t Peter either.


	4. May 2, 1000 - Lantern Waste, Narnia

The four of them trudged through the snow in their oversized fur coats. Their new acquaintance, Mr. Beaver, led them through the hushed woods and they kept as close to him as they dared. Lucy was almost tripping over him, and Edmund followed a step or two behind them. Susan and Peter trudged along several metres back.

They entered a clearing, and Peter slowed his pace a bit, motioning for Susan to do likewise.

“Susan. At some point we need to talk about what in the bollocks is going on. So far, I’m just going with it. For Lucy’s sake. She was right all along and deserves the benefit of the doubt. But surely none of this can actually be happening. It’s mad. You know that better than I do, I’m sure. So, when we get the chance, we need to talk this over properly.”

Susan nodded. “Absolutely. I mean, well, I think we should leave now, while we still can, but we’d have to drag Lucy out, screaming, by her earlobes.”

“Well, then let’s talk about this now. We’re wandering deeper and deeper into this place and the further we get, the more committed we are to staying. So if we decide that there’s something truly dangerous about this place, we should leave before we arrive at whatever destination we’re headed for.”

“Right. Wow. Peter, you’re thinking about this very logically.”

“You don’t have to sound so surprised. I’m just trying to be responsible.”

“Yeah, no, you’re right, sorry.”

Peter twisted up his boyish face into an expression of sober contemplation. “What would be a sure sign that we ought to turn back? We need to decide on, you know, on our, uh, dealbreakers right now so either one of us can make the call at any time and get us all out. At what point does all this stop being incredible wonderful fairy tale magic and become terrible dangerous deathly sorcery?”

“Well, that witch did sound awful. I certainly wouldn’t want to get in her way.”

“Right, so an encounter or close call or even a whiff of trouble with her and we’re gone?”

“Right.”

“What else?”

They walked along a few paces in silence before Susan spoke up again.

“You do realize that we’re never going to be able to tell anyone about this at home? Nobody would believe us in a million years. I can barely believe my own senses. I’m seriously wondering whether we’re all barking.”

“I know. But,” Peter reached down and packed together a handful of snow. “It sure feels right. It’s cold and wet and soft, just like snow is supposed to be. The tree bark feels like tree bark ought to. Other than Mr. Beaver and the lamppost, everything so far has looked and felt and sounded just like it does in England. It may sound mad but I’m for believing our senses. For the time being, at least.”

“Yes, I suppose. Hey, um, Peter. Do you suppose that talking beavers have the... same diet as regular beavers?”

Peter stopped hiking and grinned widely, covering his mouth. “Really Susan? You’re worried about Mr. Beaver? Mr. Beaver? So far, Lucy has told us about an awful witch who’s cursed this entire land with perpetual winter and sent a pack of wolves to abduct her faun friend, she’s told us that the trees are alive and watching our every move, we’ve been told in hushed tones about a bloke named Aslan who’s supposedly ‘on the move’, whatever that means, and that’s all happened in the first hour of our arrival. And you’re worried about Mr. Beaver? The talking rodent up there who’s half the size of Lucy, has no claws or muscles to speak of, and sounds like he should be slouching over a barstool in the most boring part of Manchester?”

Susan scowled and turned to keep hiking. “Oh shut up.”

Peter cackled and leapt through the snow to catch up to her.

“Oh Susan, I actually hope we get to stay here for awhile. You’ve become rather boring. I think this place could be good for you.”

Susan grimaced and stuck out her tongue at him. “I’m just being careful.”

“Right. Careful. That’s what it is.”

Lucy looked back then and waved for them to catch up. Peter glanced over at Susan and laid his arm around her shoulder. She shrunk away from him a bit, and then tolerated it, as he went on. “As long as we stick together, I think we’ll be fine. It doesn’t have to be scary. It can be an adventure.”

Susan watched her feet rising and falling in the snow, leaned into her brother’s arm a little, and nodded.


	5. September 4, 1949 - London, England

Susan lay in bed, watching the ceiling. Dick was sprawled out beside her, fast asleep, but she had no such luck. Her heart continued to throb as if she had just barely avoided a murderous motorist on the walk to work. Visions of train crash carnage haunted her eyelids.

Pushing herself up, she sat on the edge of the bed in the dark. She dropped her head into her hands, took a few deep breaths.

What if they were never found?

High King Peter the Magnificent and King Edmund the Just. Two of Narnia’s greatest heroes. Friends of Aslan. Vanquishers of the White Witch. Victors in the Battle of Beruna and Lords of Cair Paravel.

Crushed in a train crash. At Finchley Station. The brakes had failed.

Susan glanced over at Dick.

Should she tell him? Would that help her sleep?

No. He’d never believe her, no matter what time of day or night, no matter how drunk, no matter how high, he’d never go for it.

Jake hadn’t believed her. Neither had Mary.

No, Dick could never know. If Jake, after all they’d been through, perfect, brilliant, open-minded Jake, if he couldn’t accept her story, then Dick certainly wouldn’t.

“What if?” She whispered it into the darkness a couple times. As if drawn magnetically onward, the inner voice mused about how her life might have unfolded if she’d never walked through that wardrobe and had instead given herself up to Mrs. Macready. To enter a ‘magical place’ at the age of twelve and then emerge fifteen years later, once again in the body of a twelve year-old, must necessitate psychotherapy of some sort. And then to return to the magic only to be told you were no longer welcome. That had been the real punch in the face. What if she’d refused right at the start?

The fifteen years of memories began to stream through her, unbidden, cherished and resented. Wiping the sudden burst of moisture from her eyes with her fingers, she reached for a tissue. The thought of dear friends like Hwona, the heroic talking mare, and Cheris, the gentle dryad of Owlwood, and Prince Gregory, the handsome and charismatic Archenlandian ambassador, were always particularly evocative.

And, of course, she still missed Tumnus and the Beavers and Winona, the giantess of Ettinsmoor, and Derkin and Pithys and the rest. She wondered again how they had learned of the four monarchs’ disappearance. How had that transpired?

Maybe she would get back there someday. She smiled at the idea. Third time’s the charm. They’d all go back together.

Or not.

She winced, caught her breath, and slipped out of bed. Fumbling around in the dark, she felt her way to the sitting room and switched on the lamp. She reached for the phone and dialled her parents’ number again.


	6. April 20, 1009 - Tashbaan, Calormen

Susan crouched at the edge of the dance floor, cackling and pretending to cover her eyes. Edmund and Derkin were facing each other in the centre of the dance floor and shaking their hips outrageously to the music as the lively, rhythmically clapping crowd of Calormene courtiers, ladies, and gentlemen looked on.

The young king and his dwarvish foreign minister had already managed to uphold their mock seriousness for an entire song, but as soon as the band transitioned to the Cuachaladaria, it became obvious that Edmund could keep up the pretence no longer. Derkin took longer to break but as soon as Edmund began missing steps and doubling over in convulsions of mirth, the majestic dwarf struck a pose and signalled expertly to the band to resolve. He threw his head back, chortling, raised his arms, and accepted the applause of the audience. Everyone cheered. Susan rushed out to them in a luminous stupor to help restore Edmund, who had crumpled to the polished tile floor in a fit of giggles, to his feet.

The brother and sister staggered over to a pair of empty seats as the entire company continued to applaud in the rhythmic, passionate fashion of the Calormenes and the band played the young monarch off centre stage. Derkin bowed once in every direction, accepting the adulation with his usual gallantry.

The applause climaxed and Derkin was swallowed up into the crowd. Once everyone began to mingle again and the band struck up a new song, Susan turned to her brother and leaned over to whisper into his ear. “Your crown is crooked, silly.”

“Yes, mother.” He gestured toward the dance floor. “You know, one of these times...”

“You are not, you smart aleck.”

“Are you still so stuck up that you can’t let loose and dance a funny dance? The whole idea was to be performatively drunk. And everyone else here is actually drunk anyway, so I doubt they’d think any less of you.”

“I am not stuck up.”

“You are.”

“Oh fine, but not that much. I just feel like the High Queen of Narnia shouldn’t...”

“Pshaw, you know very well that Peter alone has enough gravitas for the entire kingdom. And the Calormenes know about Aslan too, and that’s instant gravitas. Stop worrying so much. Let loose. Have fun.”

Susan smiled and nodded. “Fine. Next time.”

“That’s more like it.” He jumped to his feet and scanned the company. “Now, Derkin. Where’s that old geezer got to?”

“He’s not a geezer. He’s actually quite young for a dwarf. And he’s there, over by the appetizers. The gap between the Archenlandian and Terebinthian ambassadors. You can see both of them talking toward the ground.”

Edmund climbed atop his chair. “Oy, Derkin. Come here.”

The dwarf bowed to the ambassadors, excused himself, and waded through the crowd. A new dance was breaking out among the locals, a fan dance in which a circle of women faced out at a circle of men, rotating in complicated patterns. Derkin gave the circles a wide berth. “Your Majesty?”

“How many times, Derkin?” Edmund accosted the dwarf.

“I’ve told Your Majesty before...”

“I know you have, and I’m ordering you to be more informal.”

“I must...”

“At least at parties.”

“Your Majesty doesn’t seem to understand...”

“Ed, he just danced an idiotic dance in front of everyone...”

 “Derkin.”

“Your Majesty.”

Susan laid her forehead in her hands. “God, you’re a clown. You know he’s never going to drop the formalities, not even at a party.”

Edmund shrugged. “I can try. That’s my royal strategy: stubborn perseverance. I’ll wear him down.”

Derkin smiled and cleared his throat. “Did Your Majesty require something?”

Edmund nodded and spun his finger in the air. “The thing we were talking about before. What do you think?”

“Well,” the dwarf chuckled and paused “I must admit. Your Majesty was likely a more convincing drunk than I. I’m afraid I let the technique of the dance and the powers of the music carry me away from our original purpose.”

“I don’t know, Derkin,” Susan interjected, a lascivious grin on her lips. “I thought the way you were shaking your hips was quite convincing.”

Derkin blushed and stumbled over a few mumbled responses. Edmund sniggered and stuck out his tongue. “Ooh-la la. Droidbot... does not... compute. It’s okay, Derkin. She has that effect on a lot of guys.”

The dwarf took the ribbing in silence with a short nod.

“So, you both think they bought it?” Susan asked.

Edmund shrugged. “Only one way to find out. But just in case, maybe we should send our security detail away and then start yelling and slurring our speech. Really seal the deal.”

He trailed off and gazed at the swirl of red fans and the intricate step-stepping of the posh dancers.

“Hey, Susan. Did you think it was odd when the envoy leader from the Lone Islands was replaced at the last minute with somebody we’ve never heard of?”

Her eyes bulged. “You think it’s the new guy?”

“I don’t know. It seemed odd to me.”

“Derkin?”

The dwarf stroked his long, jet black beard and gazed at her face. “Well, I do think it was a bizarre breach of protocol. The Lone Islanders are generally reliable and above-board.”

Edmund waved his hands about him and leaped to his feet. “Let’s go. Now.”

“What? Now?”

“Now.”

He spun around, grabbed Susan’s arm, and rushed her through the crowd to the door. The dance halted, fans wavering uncertainly in midair. She could hear Derkin yelling behind them and a clatter of glasses hitting the ground. The handful of dwarves and fauns from their security detail began rousing themselves in alarm. Someone screamed.

“Edmund James Pevensie, tell me right...”

An arrow shuddered into the wall next to her head. She shrieked. Wrenching her arm free of Edmund’s grasp, she broke out in a sprint and passed him in a few strides. Bows twanged. More arrows thudded into the wall and clattered to the floor behind them as they rounded a corner and rushed into a sparsely occupied sitting room. They slammed the door and locked it.

Edmund smirked and drew a dagger from his belt. “Well, at least whoever’s trying to assassinate us is spectacularly bad at it.”

Susan kneeled by the door as she peeked through the crack. “Their aim wasn’t the only thing. Their power was pitiful. How weak must their bow arms be? It’s actually rather insulting.”

“Well, they know we’re not actually drunk now.”

More yells and crashes of china and glass drew them back to the crack in the door.

“Can you see Derkin?”

“That chap can handle himself. I’m sure he’s fine.”

Susan gestured to the knife in Edmund’s hands. “Hand it over, little brother.”

He drew it away at arm’s length. “No. Get your own.”

“Ugh, fine. But next time you come to Calormen, you can forget about my coming with you.”

“Fine. I’ll ask Lucy. At least she won’t whine about the heat 24/7.”

“Oh shut up, you cheeky bastard.”

Susan pushed herself away from the door and wandered across the room. She sat down on a carved wood chair by a window facing out to the courtyard below. Edmund remained standing near the door, listening for a sign from Derkin.

The ongoing scuffle in the hall had drawn closer. Edmund kept his eye pressed against the gap between the doors.

“Derkin and the others are holding them off, but it looks like they’re fighting the official palace guards. I think the Tisroc himself is behind this one. Sue?”

Susan pushed him aside and pressed her eye to the crack. “Right, yes. That’s a state sponsored assassination attempt if do I say so myself. Let’s grab Derkin and get out of here while we still can.”

Edmund swung open the door and Susan followed him out.

Almost at once, an arrow appeared in the wall next to Edmund’s head, grazing his ear enroute. Derkin bellowed and charged the bowman, flashing his broadsword about and disembowelling the slow-witted fellow without hesitation. Beyond him, it seemed the entire Calormene palace guard was struggling with the shaky remainder of the Narnian security detail.

In a flash, Edmund leapt to the dwarf and seized his collar. The two struggled, Edmund trying to move them to cover, Derkin exhorting them to escape without him. Susan, sizing up the struggle from the cover of the doorway, noticed a stable boy peeking out of a closet down the hall who was clutching three or four quivers and bows. She quickly tallied up only four remaining members of the Narnian detail, outside of the two monarchs and Derkin.

As the distraction of Edmund cleaving a Calormene guard’s head square off his shoulders played out, Susan dashed down the hall, wrenched open the closet, and tackled the stable boy. Arming herself before most of the hapless Calormenes had a chance to calibrate to the new threat, she sent three missiles to the closest targets.

She yelled at Derkin and Edmund, who were engaged with a duo of quasi-ninja swordsmen.

“Hey! How about we leave?”

In a spare moment, as Derkin had managed to catch one of the ninjas’ swords in a nearby wall tapestry, Edmund glanced over at Susan and held up his pointer finger. “Just a second.”

“Do you need a hand?”

“Nuh-uh. We’ve got it.”

The four remaining members of the security detail, which had been holding off the mass of aggressors from the ballroom, had been winnowed down to two, one of whom was limping.

Susan sent an arrow through the throat of one of the quasi-ninjas and then dropped the other through the heart.

“Let’s go!”

Edmund and Derkin followed her out, racing to catch up with her at the door of a wide service entrance, opening onto the courtyard. The faun and the dwarf from the detail were cut down and stampeded over by the agitated surge of Calormenes.

“You buggers,” Susan vented. “More concerned with your honour than your duty or safety. Do I have to do everything?”

Edmund smirked and stuck out his tongue. “You managed.”

They stepped outside and Derkin scanned the parapet for signs of trouble. At their arrival that evening, a full honour guard had paraded through the courtyard and along the wall. The swords, arrows, and spears had seemed like harmless regalia only hours ago. Surely, the whole company hadn’t all gone home. The alarm would be sounded presently and the three Narnians would learn how deep the conspiracy against them went.

Sure enough, a congregation was forming at the gate, swords and daggers gleaming in the palace torchlight. The soldiers stepped forward, formed a phalanx, and began marching forward.

“Your Majesties? Are we doing this?”

“Yes, Derkin, we’re doing this,” Edmund said, twirling the two swords he’d picked up.

“Need I remind you of the risks?”

“No, thank you, Derkin,” said Susan. “Let’s get out of here.”

The three of them broke into a run. Edmund whooped and bounded forward, flashing the swords in front of him. Derkin, only half a step behind his king, bellowed a battlecry Susan hadn’t heard since the Battle of Beruna.

“For Narnia and for Aslan!”

Throwing propriety to the wind, Susan careened forward, keeping pace with them and yipping and howling into the sky. She drew her bow and sent an arrow through the left eye of the foremost soldier. Then the secondmost. Then the next three.

The soldiers broke formation. Scattering to either side, Edmund and Derkin laid about them with their blades and Susan sent three more arrows into three more eye sockets before they made for the stable.

“Hey Sue, I think your aim is slipping.”

“Hilarious, Ed.”

The remaining soldiers regrouped and made chase. Edmund and Derkin rushed in and untied their horses as Susan sent arrows back at their pursuers.

“Your Majesty, there’s a talking Narnian horse in here. Two of them.”

“Untie them,” she hissed. “They ride with us. I can hold off these schlubs a little longer.”

Then Edmund was at her side, mounted on a chestnut stallion and clutching tight to his swords, followed by the two talking horses.

“Your Majesty,” neighed the larger of the two, “Queen Susan, I’d be honoured to let you ride me.”

Susan sent off two more arrows, threw her bow over her shoulder, and caressed the horse’s neck. “Thank you so much. It’s an honour. What is your name?”

“Hwona, my Queen.”

Susan mounted the horse expertly. “Thank you, Hwona. Derkin, let’s go. We’re out of time.”

The dwarf bounded out, astride a little white pony, and led the way, crooning an old Narnian folk song without a care in the world.

The crowd of soldiers had thinned to about twenty hapless Calormenes. They were now within a short distance of the stable and had spread themselves so as to block all the exits from the courtyard.

Susan, Edmund, and the horses spurred after Derkin and picked up speed. They crashed through the crowd of soldiers as if they were reeds and quickly left them in a cloud of dust. Rounding the corner onto the main entrance road, they clattered down to the gate. Six soldiers had been stationed there but, once two of them had discovered arrows protruding from their shoulders, they rushed to make way.

Before long, the Narnians had left the city entirely and were racing through the endless blackness of the desert with only the stars and moon to direct them. They rose and descended with the dunes, winding their path through the coolness and obscurity by the reflected nightlights shimmering off of the sea.

Susan steadied herself on Hwona and gasped at the sight of the moon. It was full and larger than she had ever seen it. Edmund rode next to her and she motioned to him to look. He drank in the sight. They exchanged a look. He smiled at her and laughed, his teeth gleaming a little in the luminescence.

On the horizon, only the outlines of the mountains were visible, and beyond them, of course, that one and only Narnia.


	7. September 4, 1949 - London, England

Susan finally slept, first only lightly, tossing and turning, then dropping into a deep exhausted slumber. Visions and distorted recollections began to swell up from her subconscious. A moment of inexplicable hesitation on the sidewalk earlier that morning. A little baby lamb, pathetic and bleating, standing alone on some black sand beach. Peter shaking his head at her. The smell of her father, and the pressure of his hands on her shoulders. A fight with a co-worker about something trivial.

The random images faded, replaced by a clear vision of a passenger train chugging along an English countryside track. She flew up to a window to see Lucy inside, gazing out at the scenery. Passing through the woods well outside London, she was engrossed with tree varieties and wildlife habitats. When the trees began to give way to farms and then more buildings, Lucy slumped back into her seat.

She glanced at her brothers, who were seated in the car with her. Aunt Polly and the Professor, along with Eustace and Jill, were about to step over to the next car for a snack. The three Pevensies weren’t hungry.

Edmund was hunched over with his face to the wall, asleep. The withdrawal appeared to be hitting him hard. His complexion was splotchy and yellow, dark bags under his eyes, periodic spasms. His jagged breaths shuddered in and out like those of a just-reprieved torture victim.

Peter sported a faded, second-hand jacket and ragged fingernails, and kept reading the same page of a newspaper over and over, dozing off each time and starting over. He glanced from time to time at his companions. The article had to do with a proposed international economic regulatory body or something important like that. He checked his watch.

The conductor hurried by their car and Peter snapped to attention. He stood up and peered out the door, asking if something was the matter. Receiving a negative answer, Peter returned to his seat and took up his paper once more.

The scene passed by for some time without much happening other than Peter checking and rechecking his watch. Lucy switched from the window to a close examination of her fingers and back again. Edmund’s slumber was monitored by his occasional whimpers and mumbles.

They continued in this manner for perhaps an hour or more until there was a loud metallic screech and the train shook.

Edmund fell off the bench and awoke as he hit the floor. Peter and Lucy managed to keep their seats, Peter only just, although he lost his newspaper, sections of which fluttered about on the floor of the booth.

The train continued to shake and they heard a loud crashing sound at the front of the train. Edmund was still squirming on the floor, gasping, totally disoriented. Peter clutched at his seat, looking from Lucy to Edmund and back again, waiting for the visceral thuds to stop. Lucy’s eyes were wide and she strained against the window, trying to see the origin of the sound when the car smashed into something, crumpled between its neighbours, and leaped from the tracks, writhing and bucking.

Lucy was hurled through the window pane, well clear of the train, her limp form bending obscenely as she bounced twice on an auxiliary road more than a dozen metres away from the tracks. Her head landed on a bunch of weeds the first time, glanced off her chest the second time, and finally rested on her arm. Their train car screeched and skidded up to her before coming to rest within arms-reach of her limp form as the last few train cars joined the mayhem.

Edmund had never regained his seat. He was balled up somewhere inside the crushed car.

Peter had leaped to his feet just before impact to pull Lucy away from the glass. He had also been thrown from the car, and had landed on the tracks somewhere. Several cars had scraped over him.

Professor Kirke, Aunt Polly, Eustace, and Jill were nowhere to be seen.

The mass of train cars skidded to a stop and settled with an awful creak and a hollow moan. Smoke rose from Finchley Station where the first few cars had smashed through a newspaper stand and caught fire. A moment of eerie silence was then followed by screams and yells, and later by sirens and bells.

A wave of tentative onlookers washed over to the sidelines and some brave souls leapt into the fray to pull people out. Some of the passengers were extricating themselves. People were pulled out, silent, covered in blood, and missing limbs, or sobbing bitterly but without a mark on them.

Lucy did not awake. Peter did not awake. Edmund did not awake.

Susan was running towards them, reassuring them that it would be alright, cradling Lucy’s head, tearing open the wreck encasing Ed, single-handedly lifting train cars to uncover Peter. They’d go to the hospital and the doctors would fix it.

But then Dick flicked on the light and stared at her through a single, open, frowning eye. “Christ, Susan, what’s the bloody problem?”

She stared up at him from her moist pillow for several seconds without speaking, breathing heavily and shuddering, tears streaming down her face. “Shut up.” She shuddered, pushing herself up and covering her face with her hands. “I just... I fucking hate you sometimes.”


	8. February 26, 1949 - London, England

Edmund banged on the door again. It was still dark and crisp outside. As she peeked at him through the door, Susan could tell he was shaking. She perceived the smell of wet clothes and marijuana. He had a black eye and a quaver in his voice. He was worse than last time.

“Damn it, Susan, I know you’re there. I can hear you knocking about.”

“I’m sorry, Ed.”

“No. No no no. That’s not, um, that’s not... Can we just talk?”

She turned around and leaned her back against the door. She watched the bedroom door, listening for Dick’s inevitable curses. Sighing and closing her eyes for a moment, she set her teeth into a severe expression.

“Ed. The last time I let you in like this, you stole from me. From me. I do all right, Ed, but not so well that I can spare a whole month’s rent whenever my brother wants to see rainbows and unicorns.”

“I’m really sorry about that. I promise I’ll never do it ever again. Ever. I promise. I just need to talk to you. Please Susan. I’m really hungry and Peter threw me out and I don’t have any...”

“He what? He threw you out?”

“It, well... it, uh, just happened a few... days ago. I don’t know... this is the first place I came. I haven’t talked to Lucy yet. She probably doesn’t know either.”

Frowning at the floor, Susan did a quick calculation. She looked up as the bedroom light flicked on and Dick appeared at the door.

“What’s going on?”

“Ed’s outside asking to come in. Peter threw him out.”

“Threw him out? Well. About bloody time.”

Susan glared at him. He smirked and shuffled into the kitchen, saying something about coffee. Susan drew the deadbolt, removed the chain, and threw open the door.

His stink flooded her senses. Edmund sighed and staggered forward. “Thank you, I...”

She blocked his way. She held up two fingers. Watching his eyes, she sought to hold contact with the dilated, roving pupils.

“Two conditions. Okay? Two. You can come in for now if you promise to follow them.”

“Okay?”

“First – no drugs. If you have any drug paraphernalia on you right now, I suggest you declare it. If I become at all suspicious that you’re high on something or that you’re trying to steal something, I won’t hesitate to kick you out and never speak to you again.”

“Well, I’m coming off something now.”

“Marijuana?”

He shrugged and bobbed his head. “Well, yes. But that not what I...”

Susan sighed and waved her hands. “Alright, you know what, I don’t want to know. Just, nothing more while you’re here.”

He exhaled and nodded. “Right. And the second thing?”

“This is temporary. I will look after you until we patch things up with Peter. I’m sure whatever you did warranted him kicking you out, but he’s a good brother and you can’t stay here long-term. So once I know what’s going on and we’ve negotiated a solution, you’re going back there to grovel and beg and promise to change. You’re going to get him to take you back. He is a reasonable man. You just need to take some responsibility for yourself.”

Edmund stared at her, hands still twitching. She took a good look at him. His dark hair was saturated with rainwater and mud, his cheeks scratched and gaunt. His right eye was bruised and his lips were raw.

She saw the tears in his eyes and choked up. She covered her mouth. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be... I suppose it’s a fresher loss for you. I just get... I get so frustrated because there are ways of dealing and I don’t know how to...”

She shrugged and left it unsaid.

“Thanks, Sue. I know what you’re meaning to say. Um. Have you told...?” He pointed to the kitchen, where Dick was making coffee.

She shook her head.

He nodded. “You’re going to have to tell him eventually.”

She stepped back and allowed him in, speaking in an undertone. “You mean, tell him that I’m actually twelve years older than him? No. Not likely. But, honestly, Ed, how are you? You look like shit. Have you been sleeping outside?”

He shrugged limply.

She set her hand on his shoulder and nodded. “Right. Remember my conditions. Are you hungry?”

He took a long, hot shower and changed into some of Dick’s old clothes before eating a mound of syrupy waffles and drinking three glasses of orange juice.

Susan and Dick sat at the table in silence after Edmund went to bed, staring at each other, trying to communicate with eyebrow arches and arm waves for several minutes until they assured themselves that he must be asleep.

“So, what’s the plan? Are you your brother’s keeper now?”

“Try to be a little understanding, okay? He’s had a rough go of it.”

“Uh-huh. I doubt it. You haven’t told me anything he’s had to deal with that you and your other siblings haven’t dealt with. I get it, your dad going missing in France and then finally showing up in a wheelchair is hard and I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. And of course the war and the Blitz and everything. But you’re holding up. Peter’s holding up. Hell, Lucy is thriving.”

“Because she pretends it didn’t happen. Hasn’t she had one of those moments around you yet? She’ll talk about friends we lost in the war in the present tense and not seem to notice everyone else’s discomfort. And nobody confronts her on it because most people, myself included, would rather strangle a puppy with their bare hands than make that girl cry.”

“Okay, well, she still seems...”

“And Peter! Peter drinks! I’ve had to walk him home from the pub several times because he realizes he can barely dial a phone, let alone stand up. He knows he’s acting self-destructively, but he tries to let it all out at once and then get through his days semi-normally.”

“Yes fine, but Ed’s at an entire other level. Don’t you see that? He’s given up. Peter and Lucy have jobs, steady jobs that pay their bills. Ed’s odd jobs can’t even pay for his various drug habits, let alone food and shelter.”

“Well it’s not...”

The front door latch clattered shut and they heard Edmund swear on the outside. Susan swept into the hallway and wrenched open the front door to see Edmund scurrying away.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

He stumbled and turned uncertainly, looking from her face to the stairwell to his pockets to his fumbling hands which refused to stay anywhere.

“Ah, well, I... need some fresh air. I could tell your conversation was about me and... I thought you should have some space.”

“I don’t believe you. What’s the real answer?”

“It’s... that I... well, that is the right answer. R-real answer.”

“Don’t lie to me, Ed.”

He crept further down the stairwell. “Thanks for breakfast, Susan. I’m going back to see if Peter has sobered up and will let me back in.”

Susan set her hands on her hips and blinked away the moisture in her eyes. “Well, remember my conditions. If I get back in there and find out that... you know?”

Edmund’s eyes lowered, and he nodded. He continued to creep down the steps. “Yeah. I get it.” He met her gaze again, wiped his eyes, and blinked. “Bye.”

He flew out of sight.

She watched the place he had been. The stairway seemed to darken. She hugged herself as if a cold wind had blown through her.

Standing motionless in the hallway for a full minute, she steeled herself to go in. Dick would doubtless have some snark about the thievery or destructiveness or inconsiderateness of her little brother. He’d done this. Dick was the problem. If Edmund had arrived and found only her, or even her and Jake, he would have stayed. He would have felt welcome. This was Dick’s fault.

But another voice assured her that it was the situation. The last thing she needed was more instability.

Dick joined her in the hallway rather than wait inside any longer.

“He stole the cash in your dresser. Again. How you didn’t think of that, I don’t...”

“Hey, arsehole,” she interrupted. Her blue eyes shot at him. “Stop talking.”


	9. September 5, 1949 - London, England

Susan hung up the phone. Every hospital she called said the same thing. No Pevensies. No Edmund and no Peter. No Eustace or Polly either.

The only news she’d managed to glean was heartbreaking. A team had pulled the mangled corpse of a teenage girl from a crushed car. Virginia and Amos Pole identified it as their daughter, Jill. Then, not five minutes later, another body was recovered from the same car, that of an old man understood to be Professor Digory Kirke.

While on the phone with St. Ann’s, Susan had finally ventured to mention that her parents were missing and that she hadn’t known their whereabouts or spoken to them in days. Describing them to the receptionist at the hospital, (“tall, grey-blond, fifty-something professor with a degenerative brain disease and a wheelchair, and a brunette, late-forties secretary with perpetual bags under her eyes and an exhausted stoop), Susan shivered as she allowed herself to explore the sombre possibilities. The receptionist urged her to speak to the police as well.

Standing by her bedroom window, Susan watched the rain falling and sought to clear her mind. The cars passing below her window sloshed along the London streets. A lacing of delicate condensation graced the window edges. She splayed out her fingers on the cold window and waggled them, savouring the temperature contrast.

After several minutes of gazing at the falling water, however, she heard a train horn in the distance.

Pushing herself away from the window, she loped into the kitchen. She opened the door of the fridge, peered inside, and slammed it closed. Peering into a cupboard, she scanned the contents for a moment before seeming to hear Edmund’s voice smirking about finding a new country in there. Startled, she slammed it shut.

Dick ambled out of the bedroom, saw her rubbing her temples and grimacing, and gave her a quizzical look. “What’s the matter with you?”

She tensed her jaw and made two tight fists.

“Aw, Christ, sorry I asked.”

Susan exhaled loudly and grunted. “You bloody wanker. You know what’s going on. Why do I have to constantly explain this to you?”

“God, Susan, I get it, it’s your family, the crash, you’re worried. Just stop yelling and tell me what you want me to do.”

“That’s the point. You don’t care what I need. You just want to fix me so I go back to the way I was before. Before any of this happened. Well she’s gone, Dick, that woman is gone. And I don’t know where she went so why don’t you go to hell and see if she’s there. Because...because I don’t want to see you anymore.”

“Come on, Susan. Be serious.”

“I’m serious.”

“You’re... you really want to go there?”

“Yes, I do want to go there.”

He frowned at her, his jaw hanging open. “Look, you’re just emotional right now because of everything that’s happening, you’re just, you know, a little bit crazy because of the...”

“A little bit crazy,” she intoned, observing him from the corner of her eye as she walked back into the kitchen. “See, this is why you’ve never been able to hold down a decent relationship before you met me. You’re already on the verge of getting dumped and you call me crazy.” Her voice continued to grow in volume until it boomed. “How do you expect that to play? I’m just supposed to accept it?”

“Dammit Susan, that’s not what I meant and you know it.” He stepped up to her and jabbed her chest with his finger, matching her volume. “I know this is a difficult time for you so I’m going to just swallow my pride and take whatever abuse you want to lay on me.”

“Get out. This is my apartment, arsehole. Get out. Now. You can afford a hotel room. So get out. I’m going for a walk. If you’re not gone when I get back, I’ll start throwing your stuff into the street.”

He blinked several times and whistled a bomb-drop whine. “Jeez. Well...goodbye, Susan.”

“Whatever.”

She slammed the door behind her.

A sparse group of pedestrians wove past her as she jaywalked away from her apartment. The shops were mostly closed and she wondered if she could go back to the hospital for a while. Instead, she caught a glimpse of the pub down the block and made haste in that direction. Peering in the window, she tried to remember the last time she’d eaten there. She paced back to the door and hesitated on the sidewalk for a few moments.

A callbox stood nearby with its door slightly ajar. Susan stepped inside and grasped the receiver. Punching in the digits, she leaned against the box as the line rang. It droned on and on and on. She tapped her knuckles impatiently and stared at the roof of the box. Mother still did not answer.

After one ring too many, she plopped the receiver back down into the cradle and turned to go. On second thought, she rounded back and dialled a different number. A lady with an old, crackly voice picked up. Susan cleared her throat. “Yes, hello. I’m looking for Jake Farthing. Is this still his number?”


	10. August 25, 1949 - London, England

The sticky, stained table hadn’t even been symbolically wiped and both of the staff had long ago stopped swinging by. The aromas of spilled spirits mingled with that of oversteeped tea, giving the pub a peculiar aroma. A dilapidated stereo in the corner wheezed out one old crooner after another. Peter had chosen the place, much to Susan’s chagrin.

Susan sat across from him in a green plastic cushioned booth. Gazing at her brother, she watched him doze off for the second time in fifteen minutes.

“Peter.”

He stiffened and blinked. “Sorry. I wasn’t...”

“Sleeping, I know.”

He nodded, the edges of his mouth twitching into something that wished it was a knowing smile. “It’s... I...”

“Hush. It’s fine. Here’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to quit one of your jobs and you’re going to let me and Lucy help pay for Ed’s expenses. You keep trying to be a hero but we are going to help you and there’s nothing else to it.”

He was slumped down in the booth, waiting for his pancakes to wander away to the next table. His syrup slathered plate was mostly untouched. Susan had packed away most of her serving already and had stopped eating ten minutes ago. Gazing down at his hands, he shook his head slowly.

“No thanks.”

“What do you plan to do then? Do you want to tell Mother about the way he’s living? You know that Father would go without his meds on odd numbered days if he thought it would help.”

“No. I appreciate it, Sue, but I have it under control.”

Susan inhaled sharply, snorted, tea dripping from her mouth. She swallowed and reached for a serviette, dabbing her face and the table. “You have it under control?” she spluttered. “You have it under control? My god. Peter. You can’t keep your eyes open. You’ve missed two whole nights of sleep this week. You threw Edmund out a few nights ago and you don’t even remember it. You’re forgetting appointments with everyone from Lucy and me to the dentist to your boss. You were hit by a taxicab yesterday for Christ’s sake. This is not ‘under control’. There’s a...”

“My god. Susan. Stop. I get it. You’re right, like always, you’re right. Just put a sock in it.” He rested his face in his hands and massaged his temples. Wiping his oil-stained fingers through his thick blond hair, he lifted his eyes to meet her gaze.

“You think I don’t know all that? I’ll sort it out. It’s not under control now, but it will be. I’ll sort it out. Just like how I sorted out those giants up in Ettinsmoor. I sorted that. Much more difficult. After we won, I had to negotiate with four separate working groups and loads of special interests, Calormenes, Archenlanders, Lone Islanders, the Ettinsmoor dryads, the lot, for months and months. I cobbled together an accord myself and then I held it together, virtually alone, for years and years. It was worse than herding cats. I’m the same bloody person. I can certainly sort out something as simple as my little brother’s erratic lifestyle.”

Susan scanned the dim room, noting that the other patrons were far off on the other side of the room and that the bartenders were bent over the bar, deep in conversation over cups of their own.

“You don’t have to do that every damn time, you know,” he sighed.

“What?”

“Take inventory of the room every time I mention something in passing about Narnia. In the first place, nobody heard and, if they did, they probably wouldn’t care enough to bother asking us what the devil we’re talking about. And in the second place, even if they did care enough to ask, they’ll either believe us when we explain it to them or they’ll conclude we’re mad and leave us alone. Either way, nothing goes wrong.”

Susan pursed her lips and nodded sharply. “Right. Logical.”

“Exactly. And since we’re doing this, I don’t like Dick.”

“Why not? What’s he done to you?”

“He’s changed you. You never used to tense up whenever someone mentioned Narnia. I’ve only noticed you doing that since you and he have gotten together.”

“It isn’t him.”

“Well, it seems like it’s him. And I don’t like that you’re sleeping with him.”

“We’ve been over this. It’s none of your business.”

“Oh yeah? Well, it feels like my business. It’s like I... with Father having all his troubles, I need to...”

“Fill a void?”

“Right. I need to be the one looking out for the family’s best interests. What if it doesn’t work out with Dick? Who’s going to want to marry a...”

“Don’t finish that, Peter, please don’t finish that sentence.”

He sighed and slouched back down into the faded green cushion of the booth, appraising his plate with a raised eyebrow. He pointed his fork at her. “I still don’t like it.”

“I understand that. But it doesn’t mean it’s going to stop just because you disapprove.”

He reached for his knife and sliced through a stack of pancakes. They were cold and had soaked up the syrup and butter. His coffee was still warm and he made short work of the meal as Susan looked on.

Looking up from the last few morsels, Peter smiled weakly. “Hey, so I don’t know if Lu told you but we’re planning to take the train up to Professor Kirke’s place later this month.”

Susan shook her head. “No, she didn’t mention it. Why?”

“The Professor invited us up, even offered to pay our way. When he found out I have that week off from the factory because of the new equipment installation, he called and insisted. I’m sure you’d be welcome as well. It’s been ages since we were up there. I can’t wait to see the old fellow again.”

“I don’t know. I probably can’t get away.”

Peter grinned and shovelled the last mouthful of pancakes into his mouth. “I knew you wouldn’t come,” his voice muffled as he chewed.

“What? Why? Because of work?”

He smacked his lips and swallowed. “No, because you want to pretend it never happened. You don’t want to be associated with something as childish as Narnia.”

“Oh please, Peter. It isn’t that simple. I’m trying for a promotion at work and they won’t...”

“Ah, a promotion. That’s plausible.”

“Yes, Peter, a promotion. So I can actually have a life here. He told me I could never go back so I’m trying to make the best of things.”

He pointed a finger at her. “You clearly want to go back to Narnia so why can’t you just embrace the next best thing?”

“I don’t know. I would like to go back, to Narnia, that is, but now that I’m stuck here, I can’t help but notice that absolutely none of it makes any sense. It feels like a dream or a hallucination or a coping mechanism. I mean, I’m not seriously suggesting that we were never there or that nothing happened, but doesn’t it strike you as strange that everything was so black and white there? Jadis is pure evil and Aslan is pure good? That’s twisted, that’s a fantasy. Or that you and I had to stop going before Ed and Lu, who then had to stop going before Eustace and Jill? Why is it only the youngest children who go? Is it because children are more prone to believing in things that don’t make any sense? Why?”

“Susan, just calm...”

“No, I will not just calm down. It doesn’t make any fucking sense and you know it. What sort of a capricious jerk of a lion-god only allows children to come in? And he isn’t even consistent. The bloody Telmarines wandered in by accident. And who knows where the Calormenes came from?”

“Susan, you’re all over the place. Calm down.”

“Oh, sod off.” She got to her feet and shoved her arms into her coat. Straightening herself up to her full height, she glared at him. “When are you going up to the Professor’s place?”

“Looks like the twenty-eighth through to the third. We’ll take Ed with us, of course.”

She nodded tersely. “Right.”

“See you when we get back?”

She paused at the door, her eyes following the passersby outside. She turned back to look him in the eye, shrugged, and walked out the door without a word.


	11. September 9, 1949 - London, England

Four days later, Lucy was still in a coma. The blur of missing person posters and compulsive hospital visits were followed the deathly silence of an empty apartment. This time, Susan had fallen asleep on the couch with the radio playing. The early morning programming blared to life without rousing her.

At 6:46am, the phone rang and Susan didn’t flinch. It rang again and she lifted her head from the pillow. It rang a third time and she stumbled over to it.

“Hello, this is Judith Elgin from St. Ann’s Hospital. I apologize for the early hour. Are you Susan Pevensie?”

She rubbed her eyes and blinked hard. “Yes, what’s happened?”

“Your sister Lucy has taken a turn for the worse. The doctors don't think she'll pull through it.”


	12. August 27, 1949 - London, England

“Susan!”

She glanced up from her desk to see Lucy striding through the office toward her. The girl’s face was red and her fists were clenched. She was wearing her school uniform and a yellow bow in her hair. The faces of Susan’s law firm colleagues registered everything from alarm to amusement as each one turned to appraise the intruder.

“Lucy? What are you doing here? Why aren’t you at school?”

Lucy planted her feet in front of Susan’s desk and set her hands on her hips. “How could you? After everything that’s happened, you’d pretend it’s all a game? How could you?”

“Lucy, what are you talking about?”

“Narnia, Susan. Narnia. What else could I be talking about? You completely humiliated Eustace. You let him go on about Narnia and then called him a baby for still playing those games, for telling children’s stories like that.” Lucy held up her fingers to punctuate “games” and “children’s stories”. “You said that Narnia was just a game we played, a fun little story, from when we were children. You condescending, two-faced prig.”

“Lucy, calm down.”

“Calm down?” She was quivering and stomping her feet. “I’ve had it with you Susan. You know why you’ll never get back there? You never stand up for it. Sooner or later you’ll just believe your own lies.”

“Lucy, let’s go out to the park. I have a break in a few minutes, so...”

“Why? Am I embarrassing you in front of your coworkers?”

Susan glanced at Meredith and Imogen, smiling and shrugging weakly. “No,” she intoned, “you’re embarrassing yourself. I’m just trying to be professional. So please let your sister who loves you take you down to the park for a walk and a bite to eat.”

Snatching up her coat, she knocked on Mr. S’s door and excused herself. Taking Lucy by the arm, she guided her through the desks, chairs, and cubicles of Campbell, Wright, & Associates to the elevator. The park was only a block and a half away, so they were silent until the noise of traffic and business had abated. Susan kept her eyes down as Lucy shot the periodic laserbeam gaze in her direction.

“Look, I admit it. I said those things to Eustace. I did, and I’m sorry that they upset you. But will you let me explain? I’m not a bloody moron. Yes, I do still remember the fifteen years we spent in Narnia. I couldn’t forget them if I wanted to, but you must have seen by now what happens when you try to tell people about that place.”

“Yes, I have, Susan, and most of the people, all of the people worth knowing at least, believed me. Every word. They even asked me questions about Narnia and now we talk about it all the time. Some of the senior boys have even started calling me Queen Lucy.”

Susan rubbed her temples and cringed. “Oh, Lu...”

“Ah, right, so they’re probably making fun of me, but I don’t care about them, so...”

“Lucy, that’s not what I meant. Maybe people... Oh I don’t know.”

“What happens with you, Susan?”

Susan opened her mouth and tried to explain with her hands before speaking. She waved them about and balled her hands into fists a few times before she found the words. “Well... the only two people I’ve told about Narnia called me crazy and stopped talking to me.”

“They musn’t have been worth knowing, then.”

Susan, quietly, “The first one was Mary Pickers...”

“Your elementary school friend?”

“Yes, almost immediately when we got home the first time. She listened for a few minutes, interrupted me to ask if this was a really long, weird joke, and then, when I said it wasn’t, she walked away. We never spoke again.... The second was Jake Farthing.”

“Oh.” Lucy frowned and lowered her eyes a few degrees. “I’m sorry, Susan. I had wondered why...” She stopped short of finishing her sentence.

“Why we stopped seeing each other so suddenly,” Susan finished for her.

“Isn’t he married now?”

Susan pursed her lips and nodded.

They were silent for a minute, dawdling down the park paths. Other pedestrians passed them. A couple with their fingers entwined. A businessman swinging his briefcase. Two children playing pass with their mother. The bright sunshine never failed to draw the Londoners out into the caress of the late summer.

“Susan, when you were talking to Eustace about this, who else was there?”

“Dick was with me. We were in the neighbourhood, saw Eustace, and I introduced them. And then Eustace brought up Narnia after I made a dumb joke about not being treated like a queen at the archery range that weekend. I panicked. I’ll apologize to him next I see him, but there was nothing else I could have done, as far as I can see. Dick is too cynical for that... part... of our lives.”

Lucy frowned again and gazed around the park, avoiding Susan’s eyes.

Susan watched her. She could see it in Lucy’s eyes, that furious mind at work even as she watched the city folk, flitting from person to person, glancing at molehills and birds’ nests and the occasional squirrel with her old hopeful exuberance, daring to listen for their tiny creature voices, her expectations only slightly muted after years of disappointment.

Lucy caught Susan’s eye once more. “So let’s see if I understand you. You still believe in Narnia, you have no doubts about your having been there, you remember it vividly, but you refuse to stand up for it?”

“It isn’t that simple, Lu.”

“I think it is.”

“I don’t know what to think, really. But I can function like this. It isn’t easy, but I can do this without completely falling apart.”

“You mean like Edmund? That’s what you meant, right?”

“It was, but it seemed harsh.”

“It would have been harsh.”

Susan and Lucy turned a corner and left the foliage cover of the park, strolling onto the sidewalk of the busy street.

“Lucy? How are you doing so well?”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re treating this whole situation like it’s the most natural thing in the world, that of course there’s a magical kingdom that we could be summoned to at any moment and from any place. Of course there are talking animals and beings from mythology living next door to humans. I mean, you’re literally a thirty-two-year-old in the body of a teenager and yet you seem like you’re not struggling at all.”

“I don’t have to struggle with it, Susan. It’s just the way it is. Why question it and make myself sick? I know Aslan will call me back someday and everything will be wonderful again, but there are still remarkable things to see and know and people to meet and talk to. This isn’t such a bad world.”

“Lucy. I’m not just talking about that. For crying out loud, you’ve already been older than you are right now. You’re about to celebrate your second fucking seventeenth birthday and you treat it like it’s the most natural fucking thing in the world. I’m worried about you.”

Lucy studied the sidewalk, her expression blank. “Don’t swear at me, Susan.”

She sighed, deflating. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

Lucy shrugged and watched a man nearly lose his hat in a stray gust of wind. “Why must everything make sense? We’re talking about magic, right? Magic isn’t logical. It could be true but not make any sense. Haven’t you ever considered that?”

“I’m definitely not going to sleep tonight.”

“What? Why?”

“You’re questioning whether logic and reason have any place in understanding and learning from our lived experiences.”

“Good Lord. Get a grip, Susan. Just explore and be amazed. Everything is so much more interesting than we give it credit for. That leaf on the ground. Or that songbird trilling from the treetops. These people walking back and forth. That building over there with the jazzy bricks. We see them all the time but we don’t stop and enjoy them. If you want to figure out why they exist, you’re just going to make yourself sick. Celebrate the fact that they’re here and they’re marvellous.”

“Come here.” Susan reached out and put her arm around her little sister. They embraced and the pedestrians flowed around them. Lucy was smiling faintly, her mouth resting on the shoulder of Susan’s coat. Susan was fighting to keep a straight face, her stomach doing somersaults and tear ducts bursting to overflowing.

“I’m still mad at you about the thing with Eustace, you know,” Lucy whispered.

Susan backed away, and saw the impish grin on her little sister’s face. “Yeah, fair enough,” she gasped. “I’ll do better next time.”

Lucy nodded, winking at her and walking away. “You’d better.”

“Have fun at Professor Kirke’s. I love you.”

Lucy called back over her shoulder. “Love you too.”


	13. September 9, 1949 - London, England

Susan had sat frozen in the back of the taxicab all the way there, dazed, not seeing the road, but, finding herself standing at the hospital entrance, she realized she couldn’t go in. She stood there outside, not daring to enter, not daring to leave, rooted to the spot.

An old woman stopped to ask if there was anything she could do. Susan stiffly shook her head. The woman wrung her hands, puckered her lips, and ambled inside.

A young couple were slowly moving toward the exit, on a path to pass Susan. The woman was on crutches with a long cast on her leg. The young man was opening the door wider than necessary and chivalrously questioning her strength and capacity for everything.

Susan melted and fled. When she finally thought of getting a cab, she had run for nearly 20 minutes. She dropped onto a park bench and gasped.

A train. The station was across the street. They had fixed a detour, bypassing Finchley. The train was heading north.

North to Narnia.

Professor Kirke’s country mansion was boarded up. Ground floor windows were covered with planks and the front door presented a soggy notice. She’d completely forgotten he’d sold the place, but it didn’t seem like anyone had used it since.

Seizing a loose board, she began to pry them away. She broke the lock with a boulder. Shoving in, Susan surveyed the foyer. Darkness shrouded the familiar stairwells and historical artefacts. The eyes of the solemn busts and painted ladies accosted her. A stack of old mildewy encyclopaedias and a ragged old axe the boys had used to chop firewood had been piled against the wallpaper.

Susan leaped up the stairs, taking two, three at a time. She tore down the halls and whirled round the corners until she reached that peculiar sequence of two steps down and three steps up. Beyond those stairs lay Spare Oom. Shoving the door open, Susan staggered in and held her ground.

There it stood, just like ten or thirty years before. The wardrobe, covered in a thin white sheet, somehow both much smaller and much larger than before.

Clenching her teeth, a strangled sob escaped her and she wobbled towards the wardrobe. Pulling down the sheet in a shower of dust, she held out her hands and ran them over the carved ornamental frontispiece. The wood nuzzled her skin, the intricate lions’ heads faithfully guarding the abandoned fur coats in perpetuity.

Wiping her eyes once more and steadying her breathing, Susan reached for the handle and stepped inside. At the smell of mothballs and the touch of fur, she was overwhelmed. The memories of those times shot through her. Humouring Lucy and knocking on the back of the wardrobe. Going in again to hide and staying for fifteen years. Falling out as children once again as if no time had passed at all.

She pushed through the coats and, in her haste, rapped her head against the back of the wardrobe. Sinking to the floor, the breath left her lungs and she shuddered out a long uneven gasp.

“You were here, I swear you were here,” she whispered. “Where did you go?”

Regaining her feet, she groped around in the dark, feeling for a hole or a treebranch or a pile of snow or a lamppost. She pounded her fists against the back of the wardrobe.

“Please. Please.”

Hammering the back of the wardrobe with her whole form, Susan yelled.

“Answer me, god damn it.”

She choked and hacked out a cough, staring at the ground. Visions and colours of the past flooded through her mind. That incredible evening at Beaver’s Dam with Lucy and Mr. Tumnus and the rest. That lovely, silly little moment she’d shared with Peter their first day in Narnia. The escape from Calormen with Edmund and Derkin and the talking horses. The images of those times and a hundred others flashed by her eyes.

Shuddering and stepping away from the back, she slouched down to sit in the door of the wardrobe and stare at her bruised fists. She flexed her hands, finding splinters squirming in her flesh.

“Don’t leave me here.”


	14. September 9, 1949 - Knebworth, England

Susan stumbled out into the unlit hallway and stood frozen in place for a full minute. Awakening, she hastened down to the main foyer. Before she realized what it was for, she was weighing the rugged old axe in her hands. Despite its age and long history of daily use, it seemed well made and thoroughly functional. She carried it back to Spare Oom clutched carefully to her chest.

Stalking inside, she straightened up and took a deep breath, a hit of adrenaline surging through her. She twirled the axe once, twice, three times, before stepping up to the wardrobe.

The first few strikes were slow. Susan had to wedge herself against the enormous thing to pry the axe out of the door more than once. The little lion heads watched keenly, mocking her. She smashed them to bits, one by one.

Warming to the task at hand, she picked a spot in the door and hacked away at it strike after strike after strike. Her bruised knuckles seethed as she curled her fingers around the axe handle and regrouped. She slammed back at the weak point she’d fashioned in the door and broke through. She mashed the axe around the hole and widened it until she could fit the entire blade into it and swing down, turning the hole into a vertical chasm. From there, she made short work of the door.

Next, she felt a second monstrous surge of power filling her and she leapt to the wall. Bracing herself against the wardrobe and heaving, she put all her strength into it. She wedged herself between the wall and the wardrobe, pushing as high up as she could reach. To her surprise, almost by magic, her superhuman effort yielded immediate fruit. The wardrobe fell onto its face, smashing both the doors underneath. The crash was cacophonous. The whole house shook.

She found herself crouching in a corner of the room with her arms over her head. The dust danced and swirled in the ray of sunlight that peeked through the half-drawn blackout curtains. The wardrobe had damaged the floorboards in several places, gouging, cracking, depressing, and scoring them in simple, predictable patterns. But the structure of the piece still resisted her. The relentlessly solid back of the wardrobe sent her red, bleary eyes searching for the axe.

Susan pushed herself to her feet.

She stood on the back of the wardrobe and lofted the axe over her shoulder and aimed. Her eyes narrowed. She hurled the blows down on it, one after another. The semi-hollow knocking sound quickly gave way to a satisfying crackling as she broke through the back. A primal scream of triumph broke out of her, and she rained down three final powerful, resounding blows.

The very last strike mashed into the pile of fur coats tangled up inside. She had broken through.

She tossed the axe to the side and stepped off. Her raging mania was bleeding out, replaced by weary numbness. She stood in place for a time, grasping about for a place to go or someone to talk to. She froze.

When she finally shook herself free, she began to toe down the hallway. Floorboard by floorboard, staircase by staircase, she floated away until she was standing out in the fresh air again, leaning her back against the front door.

The sun beamed down at her, making her squint and scowl. She staggered away in the direction of the train station. She crashed through the woods, taking several wrong turns, falling into creeks, and staggering across access roads, until she found herself standing beside some train tracks in a quiet wood.

Standing there for an uncertain amount of time, she gazed at the cool, dull steel. She felt like resting her head on it. It could be over soon. It could all be over soon.

She took a step forward, then two more. Bending over, she touched the track tenderly, her stone-faced expression softening. Grasping one of the rails, she ran her mangled hands up and down it, and placed her head between them.

Kilometres in the distance, a train shrieked, barely audible and obscured from view. Calmer, Susan closed her eyes, her hands moving to her sides. A new spasm shuddered through her. The cold rail began to vibrate against her head. She pushed herself to her feet and turned to face the train.

The hooting and rumbling of the train drew closer. Susan closed her eyes and stepped off the tracks for several minutes as it approached. She sought to clear her mind and calm her nerves so her final moments could be stoic and mature, or at least something other than hysterical blubbering and thoughtless compulsion.

To her dismay, a panic seized her. She determined that she could only try to distract herself. She cycled through the faces of her family: Father, Mother, Lucy, Peter, Edmund. She envisioned the law firm she would have started, and spoke the names she had chosen years earlier for the children she would have had, and the pivotal historical moments she would have witnessed. She flicked her wrist in dismissal and stepped onto the tracks.

She opened her eyes. She could see inside the front car. The train engineer was desperately waving her off the tracks and reaching for the brakes but it was too late. She shook her head with firm determination but even then felt her resolve slipping away. Inexplicably, and out of nowhere, Romeo and Juliet’s failure to communicate pounded through her brain and felt true to her and she imagined Lucy making a miraculous recovery only to discover that it was now she who was alone in the world.

Tripping in her haste, Susan spilled sideways and off the tracks. The train roared past her.

Falling, she hit her head on something and blacked out.

When she finally woke up, a good long minute elapsed before she could compute that Jake Farthing was standing over her.


	15. September 9, 1949 - London, England

When they arrived at the hospital, Susan wobbled a bit as she exited Jake’s car but found her footing quickly. She sped off towards Lucy’s room with Jake right behind her. The nurse at the desk recognized her and beckoned her into the room after her.

Lucy was still laying there. Susan watched the girl breathe long, tortured breaths. Her pulse throbbed faintly. Her face was sweaty and discoloured, and her expression had soured since Susan had visited yesterday. Jake blanched visibly as he saw the discoloured, dying girl, unaware until that afternoon that the Pevensies had been aboard the infamous crash.

The nurse watched Susan’s face from the other side of the bed. “Doctor Turnbull says your sister’s internal bleeding is not abating and there’s little more we can do.”

Jake set his hand on her shoulder. Susan reached for it as she watched the nurse explain the more technical reasons why Lucy was about to die. Susan nodded when she was supposed to, thanked the nurse as she left, and collapsed into a chair. Jake pulled another chair from the corner of the room and sat next to her.

He had said a lot of things in the car on the way over but Susan hadn’t absorbed any of them.

“Tell me again,” she demanded.

“Tell you what?”

“How you knew to find me there.”

“Lucy told me.”

“As an apparition or in a dream or...?”

He sighed and slouched down a bit in his chair, his eyes fixed on Susan’s knees. “No, no, nothing like that. She called me and left a message. I didn’t respond immediately, I admit. She called me more than a week ago, just before you all were going up to your friend’s place in the country.”

“I didn’t go.”

He squinted at her, studying her eyes. “We were just there. That’s where I found you.”

“I only went up this morning.”

“Oh. I guess that’s why you weren’t on the train with... Lucy told me you were going with them.”

Susan shook her head. “I had work. What did Lucy tell you?”

His Adam’s apple bobbed a little as he searched out the window for his next words. He absently fidgeted with the gold ring on his left index finger. “She... she told me that you’d had a conversation and that I had come up. She explained to me that I had been one of two people that you had trusted enough to share your... childhood adventures with, and that those... childhood adventures had been 100% real. She said that you were actually probably understating what had happened when you were children. She told me that you’ve had trouble trusting people and were acting... you were... she was worried about you.”

As Jake had been speaking, Susan had crept out of her chair and knelt next to the bed. She reached up and held Lucy’s left hand to her lips.

He continued. “I don’t know how she found my new phone number or how she managed to get through to me like she did, but it was a really singular conversation. She’s a remarkable girl. She didn’t ask me to do anything, she just wanted to back you up and explain that you weren’t crazy or anything like that. And once I heard that, I was upset because I realized I had behaved poorly toward you. You’d never told tall tales before and when you were telling me about... um...”

Susan was holding Lucy’s hand to her cheek and watching Jake from the floor. “Narnia?”

He nodded and pointed at her. “Right, Narnia. When you were telling me about Narnia, you were serious and tried to prepare me, and you never...”

She stood up and returned to her chair. “Jake, let me stop you there. I appreciate you coming to find me and for telling me all this. But I’ve never held any of that against you. You acted as generously to me in that moment as I would have to you if we were reversed. If you still feel guilty for that, then, I forgive you, even though you don’t need it.”

“I appreciate that.”

“And, thanks, by the way.”

He pointed at Lucy, shaking his head. “Thank her, not me.”


	16. ~2555 - Shadowless Narnia

Lucy’s feet barely dusted the ground as she hurtled toward Aslan’s Country. The light was almost cresting the horizon to her right and she watched as the shadows fled to her left. A motion caught her eye and she saw the glittering, gleaming gate at the top of the mountain open wide and beckon them inside.

Edmund and Eustace had pulled off ahead of everyone, even Jewel the Unicorn and Farsight the Eagle, pushing each other faster and faster, flailing and chortling like they had when they were boys. Peter had lifted Aunt Polly, the lady suddenly filled with the spirit of a teenager, onto his shoulders as if she weighed nothing at all and continued careening toward the paradise ahead. Poggin and Puzzle continued to exchange glances of wonderment as they saw themselves keep pace with the others. And Jill, King Tirian, and the Professor had clasped hands and were bawling out the chorus of “Narnia Forever” as if they had practiced the harmony for weeks, singing as they ran with breath to spare.

With a little focus, Lucy discovered she now had binoculars for eyes. She pointed them toward the space immediately inside the open gates, at the crowd gathering there to receive them. Familiar figures revealed themselves to her, dozens upon dozens of them. A redbearded dwarf. A handsome prince. A gallant mouse. A scarved faun. The lion. They were all present, each and every one, and waiting expectantly.

The scene grew fuller and fuller as they galloped toward it, but Lucy fell behind. She frowned and examined her legs. The others flew ahead but Lucy slowed to a stop. She turned to look back at the way they had come, pausing, sensing a presence.

Turning again, she watched the others enter the open gates. Edmund, Eustace, the dogs, Farsight, and Jewel had already entered them and been enveloped in cheers, hugs, and high-fives. She turned and glanced back across the massive plains. She opened her palms and counted on her fingers before gazing at the way they’d come once more. For the briefest moment, she felt less than whole, as if she had lost an arm, hours ago, and was only just realizing it.

A soft padding step sounded next to her and she broke into a huge grin. She mouthed the name and the lion was beside her and she was reaching into his mane. Nothing else mattered in that moment. The masses had followed Aslan down the hill and the friends of ages past were crowding around her, embracing her, calling to her, kissing her, and leading her up to Aslan’s Country.

As they reached the gates and the dwarves and rabbits and fauns and dogs and dryads and humans were crowding through it, Lucy stopped to survey the scene. Aslan paused with her and watched the young woman, smiling majestically.

The light had risen in the sky and the shadows had disappeared. The whole expanse of green and blue and white and brown and gold stretched out before her as she reached her hand to her lips. Without even knowing why, she blew a kiss back the way they’d come. She watched, imagining it floating through the air and, at long last, finding its way back where she felt it needed to go.

Then she turned and entered paradise.


	17. September 10, 1949 - London, England

Lucy died that night. Susan and Jake were still hovering around the bed as the doctors attempted one final rescue but she was gone. Lucy’s pulse had faded with each passing hour until she'd gone into shock shortly after midnight.

Susan tried to steel herself to face the onslaught of death related mandatory tasks: the phone calls, forms, funeral arrangements, the whole gamut. But she set all that aside for a moment so she could say goodbye.

The hospital staff left the room so she could have some privacy and Jake left to call his wife, Liz, with a final update.

Standing next to the bed near Lucy’s head, Susan leaned over her. She played with the girl’s hair, ran her fingers over her features, and shuddered at the clammy coldness of her skin. Susan gritted her teeth and kissed Lucy’s forehead, letting her face rest there for a long time.

“Tell Mummy and Daddy,” she whispered, “I love them. Tell Peter and Ed that I love them. Tell them I’m sorry. I didn’t... I wasn’t...” She took a step back. She pulled the chair next to the bed and sat down, watching Lucy’s inanimate face. Shaking her head, she sighed. “I don’t know what to tell them.”

Reaching out to caress Lucy’s cheek in her hand, Susan whispered. “My darling girl. My darling darling girl.”

The nurses entered the room some time later. Susan kissed Lucy’s cold, lifeless forehead one last time and stepped outside. Jake had returned and sat down in the hallway nearby, and Susan joined him. Lucy’s corpse, covered by a sheet, was rolled past them and then was gone.

After a significant pause, Jake cleared his throat. “Do you have family you can stay with tonight? Aunts, uncles, cousins?”

Susan turned her thoughts to Eustace’s parents, Uncle Harold and Aunt Alberta, who had called her the day after the crash. She’d mostly avoided them but they’d shown up to see Lucy at least twice and pinned up stacks of missing person posters for her parents. Susan had once hated those two almost as much as she’d hated Eustace. After their son’s Dawn Treader adventure, even Harold and Alberta had seemed to mellow, if not to the degree that Eustace had. Susan wondered who had changed more, them or her.

She wondered about Amos and Virginia Pole. Susan had barely known Jill, let alone her parents, but she had met them at a school function a year or so back and been floored by their kindness and generosity of spirit. Jill’s older siblings, George and Harriet, were roughly Lucy and Edmond’s ages, respectively, but Susan had only heard them spoken of glowingly in absentia.

Finally, Susan considered her Aunt Peggy, Mother’s sister. Susan had met her for the first time when she’d accompanied her parents to America after the war and they’d traded monthly letters ever since. Her Manhattan apartment was small but roomy enough for a prolonged visit, and Susan had delighted in her time there. Peggy was a remarkable woman and the Big Apple was a remarkable place.

“Maybe,” she finally responded to Jake’s question. “Yes, I should call my Aunt and Uncle. They should know about... this.”

“Right. Do you want me to call them for you?”

“Thanks but no. I can do it.”

“Phone’s down the hall there and to the right.”

Susan collected herself and paced down the hall. She reached for the receiver and held it to her ear for a few seconds, savouring the constancy of the dial tone. She flipped open her pocket address book and double checked Harold and Alberta’s number. She dialled.

Aunt Alberta answered, her alto, businesslike voice sounding more human than Susan had ever heard it.

“Aunt Alberta?” Her voice wavered tellingly.

“Susan? Is that you? What’s going on?”

Susan took a deep breath so she could get through this but began to sob regardless. “I’m at St. Ann’s. Lucy... She’s gone. She... couldn’t pull through.”

Alberta was silent except for a small gasp. The phone receiver jostled a bit, as Susan imagined Alberta wiping her eyes with a handkerchief.

She pressed on, feeling like she should finish while she was still able to speak. “She was... bleeding internally and it got much worse at the end and she went into shock and everything, um... everything stopped working. I was...”

“Susan.” Alberta had found her tongue. “Can I interrupt?”

“Yes.”

“Can we come pick you up? I don’t know much about your life or your friends or anything, and that’s fine, but you’re welcome to stay here if you’d like. I know the family is rather thinly spread these days. But we could be there in, what? Harold? Forty minutes? Forty minutes.”

Susan rested her forehead on the wall. She squeaked out a thank you and hung up.

When Uncle Harold and Aunt Alberta pulled up at the front of the hospital thirty-five minutes later in their spartan brown sedan, Susan and Jake were waiting. The sky had clouded while they were inside and some light rain had begun to fall. Aunt Alberta reached for Susan and they hugged, perhaps for the first time in their lives. Uncle Harold patted her on the shoulder and offered her his clean, slightly frayed handkerchief when she started sobbing again.

“Let it out, Suzy. We’ve got you,” crooned Alberta, stroking her hair. “We’ve got you.”

Once she had recovered a little, Susan turned to Jake. “Thanks for finding me and staying with me through all this.”

Jake nodded and clasped her shoulder. “Of course. And maybe let’s keep in touch. I think you and Lizzie would get on famously, if that’s not too peculiar for you.”

“I’d like that. Thank you, Jake.”

She made for the car door, but he stopped her.

“Susan? If you want to tell me more about Narnia sometime, I’d be happy to listen.”

Susan gripped the backseat car door and gazed back into the hospital. “Thanks, um...” She hesitated. She shook her head. “I’ll let you know.”

Driving home to their modest townhouse in Marylebone, Uncle Harold was mostly quiet. Aunt Alberta sat in the back and asked Susan a few careful questions, but soon the three of them lapsed into silence. Susan rested her head on Aunt Alberta’s shoulder, felt the woman’s arm reach around her, and closed her eyes.

An image presented itself to Susan on the inside of her eyelids, a smooth green hill, bordered by a green wall and magnificent golden gates. Branches of trees whose leaves looked like silver and whose fruit like gold rose up above the walls and dangled over the sides. A multitude of creatures, men and beasts, women and spirits, milled about at the open gates. Susan watched as several figures rushed into her field of vision and up the hill with absurd speed: some dogs, a unicorn, an eagle.

She gasped. Edmund and Eustace flashed past her, then Peter and Aunt Polly and a dwarf and a donkey. A handsome, princely young man followed with Jill and Professor Kirke hand in hand beside him, all becoming quickly enveloped in the throng at the gates.

Susan could sense one final figure. This one approached at a walk. Susan could not turn, but the entire multitude was fixed on the final pilgrim. She strained to see behind her.

The final figure appeared.

It was Lucy. The girl seemed unsure, turning to look back the way she had come, like she suspected she’d left something behind. Susan called out to her, waved her arms, hollered until she felt hoarse, stomped her feet, but Lucy couldn’t perceive her. She looked straight through her.

A flash of golden mane appeared out of the throng at the gate and approached Lucy from behind. Susan watched him and her heart froze as she felt his enormous lion eyes fixed on her apparition. He studied her as he padded up behind Lucy. They were the same eyes which had once filled her with such inexpressible joy and love all those years ago, but now she could read in them only unspeakable coldness and contempt. She shrank under his gaze.

As if stepping out of an enchantment, Susan attempted to fight the magic by racing to her sister’s side but one shake of Aslan’s whiskers froze her in place. Thrashing about, she screamed and called out to Lucy and it seemed like it was working. Lucy turned and squinted, as if Susan were a smudged chalky word on a blackboard on the far side of the room.

At the last moment, however, Aslan intercepted Lucy with a growl and broke the connection. Lucy did not seem to realize what had just happened. The girl turned at the sound of the great cat’s approach and broke into a huge grin. As Aslan placed his body between her and Susan, Lucy reached into his mane, running her fingers through it like they had always done before. The throng was descending the hill to encircle and embrace them. Susan lost count of all the familiar faces she could see. Aslan and the others drew Lucy in, urging her to enter the wall-encircled hilltop.

But Lucy hesitated. Everyone’s eyes were still fixed on her. The girl gazed down at the golden plains, the sparkling rivers, the dewy valleys, out at the snowcapped mountains and fluffy clouds and cerulean sky. The majesty of the vista registered on her slack-jawed face.

Susan clung to her now fading, shrinking vision. In the diminishing glimmers of her revelation, Susan watched as Lucy held a hand to her lips. She blew her kiss back the direction she’d come but Susan sensed it rush past her, unfulfilled.

Lucy vanished into the crowd.

Susan hollered after her sister. She felt her ghost fall to its knees, begging Lucy for forgiveness. She pleaded to their backs, entreating them to let Lucy come back but nobody could hear her. Not Tumnus, not Reepicheep, not Caspian, not Hwona, not Puddleglum, not Mr. and Mrs. Beaver.

A surge of expletive bile vomited from her and she started calling down curses on Aslan until she was alone and kneeling in a swirling, trembling black and white travesty of Shadowless Narnia.

Then everything went dark except for a few lampposts. The way Aunt Alberta was caressing her arm and cooing that there was nothing she could have done, Susan could only wonder what she’d been saying in her sleep. The car door opened and she let Uncle Harold and Aunt Alberta’s arms encircle her and guide her indoors.

 


End file.
